


shift and turn and swear and yearn

by defcontwo



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), The Avengers - All Fandoms, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-13
Updated: 2012-09-13
Packaged: 2017-11-14 04:26:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/511294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Black Widow and Wolverine, a friendship in snapshots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shift and turn and swear and yearn

**Author's Note:**

> this was all inspired by Winter Soldier #10 but it's been something that I've been wanting to write in some form or another for a long time. so bear in mind that there's spoiler-y implications.

01.

The first time he meets her, she is barely out of childhood, whip smart and rail thin, and holding herself together at the seams with false bravado and a pretty smile that fools everyone but him. 

Nothing in her wavers as she idly dodges a punch from him and tosses out, "I don't know who I am." A question, a statement, an irrefutable fact that she has come to accept. 

This, he understands. He wakes up every morning and he can feel an ache just beyond his reach, some truth that he's meant to know but he'll never find again, of who he used to be and how far he's strayed. It's an old wound, one that he papers over with tobacco and blood on his knuckles and the rap-tap beat of his heart during a fight, the only time when he really feels alive. 

He's not here to play uncle-mentor to some upstart little Russian brat but she's doing her level best to kick his ass all over the training mat and almost succeeding, and it's almost enough to make him smile. 

He sees something in this girl that he recognizes, something of himself that makes him hope that it's not too late for her, even if it's too late for him. 

"Well, kid, that makes two of us. But they call me Logan." 

She takes advantage of his distraction to sweep the feet out from under him. He can only laugh. He thinks, distantly, that it's been a long time since someone could make him laugh. 

"Nice to meet you, Logan. They call me Natalia." 

02.

The second time he meets her, she is much older but he can't know that - he doesn't remember her, just as she doesn't remember him. 

She is a blur of red and black alongside the fledgeling vigilante Daredevil. Logan watches, arms crossed as he leans against the alley wall, as the duo take on a team of A.I.M recruits who wandered their way into Hell's Kitchen, straight into the devil's path. 

It was curiosity that brought him here. It never pays to ignore the new game in town, Logan always says. 

She is the better fighter of the two, that much is clear. Daredevil fights like a man trying to find a reason to get up in the morning, like a man who has just found his purpose in life and is trying it on to see if it fits as well as he hopes. 

The Black Widow fights like she's been fighting for years, like this is all she knows and she knows it well. There's something in her style and stance that shakes loose a flash of memory, a burst of nostalgia, but Logan waves it off. He's been chasing ghosts and fleeting memories for years now and it's never amounted to much of anything besides more headaches and false hopes. 

The A.I.M. recruits are many but as is usually the case with A.I.M. and its minions, they are stupid and undertrained, and Daredevil and the Black Widow more than have the situation under control. 

All the same. "The hell with this," Logan says, grinding out his cigar and pushing away from the wall. 

He leaps into the melee, all elbows and the smooth snikt of his adamantium claws. Neither of the duo looks startled by his entrance to their fight, giving him the not entirely pleasant impression that they've known he's been following them for quite a few blocks. Still, two becomes three and they fall in beside each other, dispatching the A.I.M. recruits with relative ease. 

There is a moment, in the middle of the fray, when he and the Widow stand back to back surrounded by the enemy, and that pang of familiarity returns, only to be lost once more to the adrenaline of the fight. 

At the end of it, surrounded by crumpled and groaning bodies, Logan turns to find the Black Widow staring at him curiously. "What, I got blood on my face or something?" 

"No," she says. "It's just. You remind me of someone." 

"That a good thing or a bad thing?" 

"I don't know," she says, quiet but firm. "I only know him from my dreams." She seems shaken and surprised by herself, and he guesses that she's not the kind of person who goes around sharing personal information with any sort of ease. 

The air is heavy with tension as Logan searches for something to say but it is Daredevil who breaks the silence. "You know, Widow, things like that might make a lesser man jealous." 

The Black Widow smiles, looking gratefully to her partner for changing the subject. "Good thing you're not a lesser man, then." 

"We'll be seeing you around, then, Wolverine?" Daredevil says, and there's amusement in his voice at that, a private joke for the Widow's sake to make her smile again. 

"As long as you don't get your fool asses killed, yeah. I'll be around," Logan says. He feels wrought out and already wants to be far away from here, downing cold beers well into the morning. 

He watches as the pair make their way out of the alley, arms slung around each other's shoulders, Daredevil limping and the Widow teasing him lightly for his injury, but supporting him nonetheless. 

_I only know him from my dreams,_ she had said, and Logan wonders what it means that for all that he has awoken gasping in the night, images of blood under his fingernails and vacant, dead eyes that he can't recall staring up at him, he has never dreamed of her. 

03\. 

There is an in between time, a space when Natasha looks at Logan and she knows more of him than he does himself. It has been a slow, groaning process, reclaiming all the pieces of herself that the Red Room carved her into. Logan is in just as many pieces and he doesn't know it yet, not really. 

But it will come in time. She won't rush it. 

04.

The third time he meets her, it's been a month. 

One month exactly since the Scarlet Witch reached into his mind and rearranged as she saw fit, shoving all of his darkest secrets to the forefront and laying all of his sins out before him. He remembers so much that he doesn't think his brain can take it, he has lived too many years on this godforsaken earth, longer than anyone has any real right to. The human mind can only take so much, he thinks, as he cracks open another bottle of whisky. It's too bad that his healing factor doesn't agree with him. 

"A secluded cabin in the wilds of Alaska. If you were going for predictable, you succeeded. You're better than this, Logan," a voice says from the door to the cabin. 

Even without all of the ways in which his senses recognize her instantly, he'd know that red hair escaping from underneath her wool hat anywhere. One day, he's going to have to sit down and ask himself why his life is so lousy with redheads. "Hello, Natalia." 

"You know that I don't go by that name anymore," she says as she shuts the door firmly behind her. 

He snorts in response, taking another swig from his bottle, before Natalia snatches out of his hands and he shouts in surprise. He forgets how goddamn fast she can be. 

Natalia pays his complaints no mind, already rummaging through the cabinets of his kitchen and plugging in the coffee maker. 

"I don't have any coffee, kid, you're wasting your time" 

"I figured as much, so I suppose it's a good thing that I brought some along." 

"Gonna tell me why you came all this way just to play barista? Don't you have better things to do?" 

"You're going to be sober and mostly aware for the conversation that we're going to have, and then I'm going to return to New York and you're going to return with me because we both have better things to do," Natalia says, her tone matter of fact and brooking no argument. 

She leans against the counter and crosses her arms, content to remain quiet while the coffee brews. When it finally does, she pours them both a mug and sits down at the table with him, eyeing him with an expectant look. 

He takes a sip of the scalding black coffee, knowing that there's no way around this that he really feels up to taking, not when the Black Widow has put her mind to something. 

"Why didn't you say anything?" He asks, because he's been buzzing with rage mixed with guilt in some way or another for the past month, and he needs to push some of this onto someone else before he goes out of his mind. 

"Would it have done any good?" Natalia asks in return, and he has to admit that she's got him there. "The only thing that you can do is move forward. You know that. You don't need me to tell you that drowning yourself in disgusting liquor in the middle of nowhere isn't a sustainable life plan. Not for people like you and me. You can't keep looking back or else it's all you'll ever do." 

"So, I should, what? Start over?" Logan says skeptically. "Not a chance, kid." 

"Not exactly what I had in mind but if it helps you to think of it that way," she says, reaching her hand across the table, as if to shake his hand. "Hello, I'm Natasha Romanova. Nice to meet you." 

Logan laughs. Sixty odd years later and there's still so many ways in which she hasn't changed, no matter how this world has tried to break her down. It is that, more than anything, that makes the decision for him. He fits his much larger hand around hers. "Nice to meet you, _Natasha_. We gettin' this show on the road or what?" 

05.

"So, you and Barnes." 

Natasha raises an eyebrow at Logan. "I'm not hearing a question in there, Logan." 

It's four in the morning and James's apartment is full to bursting with the Avengers who have made it their home over the past few months, all in varying stages of rest. Clint and Bobbi are passed out on the sofa, draped all over each other, never bothering to change out of their battle gear. They can hear Luke Cage snoring from the next room and she's sure that Spider-Man is tucked away somewhere. It's reduced the two of them to whispers, something that Logan has never been very good at. 

He shrugs. "It's weird, is all. I knew you two when you were kids. Makes a man feel old." 

"We were never kids," Natasha says because every once in a while, in the darkest hours of the night, she lets herself indulge in a little melancholy. 

"Nah, I guess you weren't." 

"You _are_ old, though. That part's true, _Uncle Logan_ ," Natasha teases. 

"You're one to talk, young lady. How many candles on your birthday cake this year?" 

She rolls her eyes exaggeratedly, mostly for show. For them, needling at each other is second nature, the only way that they really know how to communicate without a training mat underneath their feet. 

"So, Logan. You and Braddock." 

He throws a rolled up napkin at her. 

"Shut it, Romanova." 

(+)

They've been putting themselves back together for so long that it doesn't surprise him anymore when everything falls apart. Still, the temptation to gut the SHIELD agent who calmly informs him that the Black Widow has gone rogue is higher than he'd ever like to admit.

He can still hear her voice ringing clearly in his mind, telling him that all they can do is move forward. 

_I'm here for Natalia._


End file.
